Chapter 8
Getting Off –Chapter Eight – (i)
Monks,
the untaught commoner might be disgusted, might he repelled, might be well rid of this body, born of the four great elements. Why is that? Seen, monks, is the growth, the decay, the appropriation, the rejection of this body, born of the four great elements. Therein might the untaught commoner be disgusted, repelled, well rid of it. Yet, monks, that which is called heart, mind, consciousness, by that the untaught commoner is unable to be disgusted, unable to be repelled, unable to be well rid. Why is that? For many long days, monks, the untaught commoner has cleaved, been attached, held: “This is me, this I am, this is my self.” Therefore the untaught commoner is unable to be disgusted, unable to be repelled, unable to be well rid.
Better, monks, the untaught commoner should approach this body, born of the four great elements, as self, not heart. Why is that? It is seen, monks, that this body, born of the four great elements, endures one year, two years, three, four, five years, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, a hundred years, or more. But, monks, that which is called heart, mind, consciousness, night and day that arises as one thing and ceases as another.
Monks, as a monkey wandering in the woods, in the jungle, seizes a branch, then, having let go, seizes another, just so, that which is called heart, mind, consciousness, night and day arises as one thing and ceases as another.
Nidana Samyutta 61
Behind the forest-sounds, the birds, the wind, I heard a distant drone too powerful to be natural. I’d been warned not to walk in the forest, but with walls the kuti was confining and I needed more space. I stopped and looked around me, and even as I did so the helicopter swooped over the hill not much above tree-top level, the swish of its blades a whispered tattoo beneath the bellow-roar of its engines. There was some leaf-cover above me. I stood still: they were looking for movement. The russet robe was good camouflage (better, I thought, than the bright colors of village and city monks) and I was unlikely to be spotted, but I couldn’t slow my adrenalized heartbeat while the ‘copter swooped overhead, nor the relief-high as it disappeared over the hill and quickly became no more than a dying clatter.
I stood silent for a minute. A preternatural silence cloaked the forest. Nothing stirred. Then a bird chirped, the lighting shifted, and the moment was past.
I didn’t think the helicopter would soon return: for several days now it had been patrolling large areas of land, not just this small forest, and it would likely be hours before it would again swoop overhead on its clattering mission. Search and destroy. Search and destroy, the villagers had warned me, and they’d be upset to learn I hadn’t heeded.
“We think you like to live dangerously.”
“There are all sorts of dangers. Being shot at isn’t necessarily the worst of them.”
I hurried on towards home now, more from a need to expend the excess adrenaline than a desire to be back at the kuti. Actually there was little danger in the forest. What they were looking for were concentrations of people, for the insurgents traveled in bands, not singly. But it didn’t help to know that the helicopter was American-made, and therefore probably had all sorts of electronic wizardry for exposing upon its sensing screens the presence of those who wished to remain anonymous and unknown, even if they were only peace-loving bhikkhus.
“Our wish is for safe and peaceful lives,” the villagers said.
“Life is a dangerous business. It can kill you anytime.”
But as I reached the hidden turnoff and arrived back at the kuti I reflected that the evidence showed the kuti to be less safe than the forest, for a machine gun had been fired upon the hut, which had been hit by one shell so hard that it had rattled and rocked back and forth. Before going in I looked again at the rafters and walls, searching for an impact point, and again found nothing. Perhaps the shell was buried in the mud walls. Perhaps it had ricocheted back into the forest. I still recalled vividly the sssswp, sssswp, like quickly ripped bits of cloth, as bullets whizzed past my ears.
It had been over before I had time to be afraid. I went to the village afterwards not from fear but because I needed to talk, to dissipate some energy. I spent that night on a dayaka’s couch, but I’d been saddened by the shabby hope with which I saw people cling to threadbare furniture, emotions, and relationships. I’d thought solitude to be cleaner and less strained, and returned the next morning to the kuti.
“The army was firing upon rebels,” one person explained.
“The police were practicing and didn’t know your kuti was behind the bushes they were shooting at,” another said.
Tucked between the door and the jamb were a letter and some newspaper clippings. Someone from the village must have dropped it by and found me gone into the forest. Now they’d surely try again to warn and guard me against my own rash folly.
I unlocked the door. Since the place now had walls I had to carry a key with me. I put the letter and clippings aside and opened the window. It was not only cramped now, but also dark and slightly dank. The robe was damp; I hung it up, then went out on the porch, where I wasn’t so enclosed. The mud walls, thick and graceless, made the kuti substantially smaller. Uncomfortable as it was I didn’t find the energy to make alterations. Nor would I have found the support.
I’d been here for several months now, ever since Crackers had disrobed. He’d written that he expected to leave Ceylon any day, and that I should return to Kandy and not let the kuti be abandoned. And I had, for it had been a gift of faith. Crackers, however, was still in Kandy, already disrobed but staying with a dayaka while waiting for money from home.
“Make a contribution to society?” I’d asked incredulously when he’d told me his reasons for disrobing.
“That’s part of it. Society’s given me my upbringing, my education, even my food, the food I eat as a layman or a monk.”
“How about paved roads and electricity and movies? Are they on your list?”
“Laugh if you want to, but I feel a sense of obligation.”
“Of course, that’s your choice, to feel it or not as you like. But I remember you once said that all the output of society was only a measure of the dissatisfaction of its people, and that you didn’t want anything more to do with that, that the flame wasn’t worth the candle, I believe you called it.”
“My attitude’s changed.”
“Evidently.”
“Besides, there’s other reasons.”
“There always are. Things are never as simple as we’d like them to be.”
“Anyway, I owe some people money. I couldn’t become a bhikkhu without paying it back.”
“Did you try writing to ask if they’d cancel the debt?”
“No.”
“Did you ask your friends if they’d help out?”
“Monks shouldn’t ask unless they’ve been invited.”
“What a reason for disrobing!”
“I don’t say a monk can’t also make a contribution to society, by doing nothing more than setting a good example. But I’m not sure I ever set one.”
“The problem with setting a good example is that nobody follows it.”
“When I became a monk I was following your example.”
“I’m flattered.”
“You’re pissed off at me.”
“Do you care?”
“Yes.”
“I’m trying not to be.”
I stayed here only so the kuti shouldn’t be abandoned, for although I tried to like it I was faced with the fact of its ruin. Sabbe sankhara anicca. Crackers had tried to give it back to me, but I’d told him to give it to the Sangha.
It wasn’t only the walls. The villagers had received, as a grant of land for residential use, the grassy hillside which used to separate the forest from the village. Foundations had already been laid when the insurrection started, and the new housing was close to the kuti, within hearing distance. The jangle of Sinhalese pop music could be heard distantly when the wind was wrong. I was learning all the hits. They were awful, but that didn’t stop me from humming them at odd times through the day. Sometimes I didn’t even stop when I caught myself.
I started a fire and put the billycan on to boil some tea, then remembered the clippings. While the water heated I sat on the wooden crate and read them.
The war, it seemed, had been started without cause by a few thousand young people who had been misled by “sinister forces.” The newspapers didn’t report that the entire North Korean legation had been declared persona non grata the day after fighting started, but within a day everybody in Ceylon knew it.
The fighting had been going on for over a week now. The reports, which were issued by the government, were cheering. With the “complete collapse” of the rebellion the war was daily on the verge of ending. Days ago we’d been warned against “becoming complacent.” The few remaining pockets of active insurgents were being “flushed out” as the rebels, their food and supplies running out, futilely fled while patriotic villagers cheered and aided the army and police in their pursuits.
Many of these rebels were surrendering and the leaders were killing one another and themselves as they saw their plans “collapsing about their ears”; but a few “hard-core insurgents” were still causing a bit of trouble. The main task of the country was the rehabilitation of the surrendered and captured rebels and the reconstruction of damaged areas (which were ever being revealed to us as more extensive than we’d thought them to be).
As I sipped the tea I examined the letter. The envelope bore official insignia. It contained a license from the government granting permission for the importation of a typewriter. I had only to collect it from the customs shed in Colombo. A flock of parrots, screaming shrilly, flew overhead towards the rice fields. I looked out at the low-bushed green and rust-brown hills that rolled away to the Upcountry.
It was years now since, as part of the Ņanavira project, the machine had been ordered and this license applied for, and I no longer gave value to the time I’d devoted to herding applications and affidavits over the hurdles constructed by government. I smiled and shook my head, amused at the justice of not getting what I’d no long sought until I no longer wanted it.
“You’ve got to be careful about what you ask for,” ‘Sumana had once remarked, “’cause you’re liable to get it.”
“But usually not before you’ve stopped wanting it.”
It was a project that would never be finished now. Ven. Ņanavira’s letters would remain off the best-seller lists, for I had no intention of getting involved again, and ‘Sumana was no longer involved either, for he was dead. His body had been cremated and the ashes thrown to the sea. I put the license into the fire and watched it burn.
I hadn’t been there, but I knew the Sinhalese friend who, night having fallen, had taken his leave of ‘Sumana that last time. ‘Sumana guided him down the sandy path that led from the kuti to the car track.
Night-cool sand under bare feet is almost as pleasurable as knowing your surroundings so well that even in pitch darkness no light is needed. Leading the way barefoot, without a light, ‘Sumana must have been feeling that special sort of intimate contact with the world when the viper struck.
Other snakes, feeling the vibrations of approaching footsteps, move out of the way; but the Russell’s viper, perhaps the worst-tempered of snakes, holds its ground, and has been known to attack without provocation. When ‘Sumana stepped too close it struck and then escaped in the dark.
He was brought to the village while a doctor was sought, but by the time help came it was too late. The venom affected his nervous system. His muscles twitched uncontrollably. Near the end, unable to speak, he tried to write a final message, but had been unable to adequately control his hands. I’d seen the paper: it was quite illegible.
Another monk had soon moved into the kuti.
So now both my friends were gone, one dead from snakebite, one from disrobing, for the Buddha has said that for a monk disrobing is death.
“I don’t think I’m ready yet. I need to go back to the lay life and establish a firmer foundation for the monk’s life,” Crackers had said. “I can be re-ordained when I’ve had more time to get ready.”
“You think you’ll be better prepared to give up suffering by going out into the world and suffering some more?”
“If you’re going to put it that way …”
“How should I put it?”
“You drive a man up against the wall, don’t you?”
“I’m not trying get you to change your mind. But I want to be upfront about it.”
“And what do you think, being upfront?”
“That you were so unhappy you didn’t know what else to do.”
Crackers thought about that for a while before replying. “I was unhappy at times. It showed, did it?”
“At times.”
“A lot?”
“Don’t you remember when you chased after me to get the kuti? Right after you got me to let you stay there? If it didn’t show a lot then, then it doesn’t show a lot.”
“That carika was a good thing for you.”
“I was sorry to see it end.”
“Did you know I was going to disrobe?”
“How can I see the future? I didn’t know how you were going to deal with your unhappiness. I just knew you weren’t satisfied with the way things were, and that you’d change them.”
“Then why’d you give me the kuti?”
“I was afraid that if I kept it against your will you’d make me as unhappy as you.”
“That’s one of the things that makes me feel I’m not yet ready. I can’t bear all the misery that goes with the job.”
“You’re right that there’s misery at times. Sometimes it can be so beautiful I can’t imagine why I’d ever want to do anything else, but other times it’s the last thing in the world I want to do.”
“What do you do then?”
“What can I do? I endure it. Eventually things get better.”
“That doesn’t sound like an improvement over the lay life.”
“You can tell me about that in another year’s time.”
“I don’t think I need to tell you about it, do I.”
“It never hurts.”
“Yes, it does. All the time.”
“Sabbe sankhara dukkha.”
“Then why endure the miseries of the monk’s life?”
“There’s the misery of addiction and there’s the misery of renunciation. At least when something’s given up there’s no more misery associated with it. But the misery of attachment goes on forever. I don’t know that misery’s a necessary part of getting to the root addiction. Maybe there’s a way of dealing with ego that’s all joy and sunshine, and I just haven’t found it. If you ever find it be sure to let me know.”
“I’d like to be rid of the misery of addiction, but I don’t think I can stand the misery of withdrawal. It’s not a question of whether I want to. I just can’t. One of the things I’ve admired about you is your capacity to endure suffering. I don’t have that. Without a teacher the way is too hard. I wish we had a teacher to make things easier.”
“The Mahathera?”
“He’s a very fine man, but I mean someone accomplished in meditation. Someone who knows what’s happening because he’s been there.”
“Ņanavira?”
“I learned a lot from him, but I mean someone who’s alive. Someone who can show me how to go around some of those brick walls instead of trying to break through them.”
“I’ve felt that way. But then I look at someone like ‘Rasa, who’s spent his whole life searching for his guru, and I can see how discontented he is. And he knows about every writer and teacher on the guru-circuit.”
“It’s incredible how much he knows about it. But he’s still trying to find out where the action is.”
“He knows all about the Dhamma except how to use it.”
“That’s a danger. But there’s dangers in every course of action. And I’ve heard about a couple of teachers in Thailand who have excellent reputations among Westerners.”
“Oh?”
“And I’ve heard about carika bhikkhus, and viharas only for dhutanga bhikkhus.”
“Oh?”
“And there’s another teacher in India, named Goenka.”
“Where’d you hear about all this?”
“‘Rasa told me.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I thought you might be interested to hear about them.”
And I was.
How could I contemplate going to India or Thailand? Hadn’t I already discussed with one of the senior bhikkhus the idea of searching for a teacher? Hadn’t he already told me that when I was prepared the teacher would appear? Wasn’t it only those who were not yet ready for a teacher who were in search of one? And besides, how could I possibly arrange the logistics?
Finances, to start with. I would have to ask dayakas for help. I wondered if between them enough could be raised to finance the trip. But then, monks don’t handle money.
“I’ll be going back to India before heading on to England,” Crackers had said. He’d hold the money and be my traveling dayaka. He’d see me as far as Calcutta anyway, and in Calcutta I’d certainly be taken care of by Mr. Barua. It had been over four years now since I’d last seen Ven. Dharmapal. It would be good to see him again for he, as much as anyone, introduced me to the Dhamma. And from Calcutta it would be easy to get to Thailand and be back in a Buddhist country again, where support wouldn’t be a problem. Then too, in India there were the four places venerated by Buddhists: the places of the birth, enlightenment, first sermon, and final passing away of the Buddha. Visiting those places was praised in the Suttas. That was a potential sidetrip.
Good will: that might be a bit sticky to organize. If I were to do this India trip I’d want the support (or at least the non-opposition) of certain senior monks, particularly the Mahathera. To act contrary to his instructions and permission would be to break the teacher-pupil relationship. By Vinaya rules I was bound to live dependent upon my teacher’s instructions for five years if I was competent and learned, “an unlearned one all his life.”
“I’ve seen so many bhikkhus leave their teachers too soon,” a senior monk had told me. “Before they were ready. And I don’t recall a single one who didn’t disrobe afterwards. At least five years. As much more than that as you need before you’re ready to live by yourself. Your whole life, if necessary.”
Though the Mahathera hadn’t objected to my leaving the Hermitage and taking up residence on my own outside of Kandy I wasn’t so sanguine about his approval of my going off to other lands, especially a non-Buddhist land such as India. To win his co-operation, though, would not only make the practical arrangements — visas, tickets, foreign-exchange credits, letters of introduction — much easier: his approval would allow me to remain in conformity with the Vinaya without the trouble of having had to change myself.
It would be an uncomfortable moment, asking for permission, for I had no idea how he might react.
“Go to India? What do you want to do such a thing for? Bhikkhus who go to India don’t come back. They disrobe there. India is no place for a bhikkhu. I’ve given you permission to go on carika, and I’ve given you permission to live away from the Hermitage, but to go to India, for that you don’t get my permission.”
And I squirmed inwardly under his imagined gaze even as I now sipped my tea and gazed at the opposite hill, thinking how I might best reply to this worst of chances.
But bhante, Ceylon isn’t the right place for me anymore. (Was it ever? And why not now? And what is, then?)
But bhante, the Buddha recommended visiting the four places of pilgrimage. (For laymen interested in meritorious deeds, not for monks intent on making an end to action.)
But bhante, the Buddha lived in India. (He was born there.)
But bhante, I want to see Ven. Dharmapal once more. (Now that’s carrying socializing to an extreme.)
But bhante, from India I can get to Thailand. That’s a good country for practicing Dhamma. (“Not by going …”)
But bhante, there are practiced bhikkhus in India and Thailand from whom I can learn much. (How about learning to be content with one place?)
But bhante, there’s a war going on. They’re killing people. Bombs exploded in the forest. They fired a machine-gun at me. I don’t want to stay here, in the middle of a revolution. I want to go to India, where it’s safe! (Oh, is that where it’s safe?)
But bhante …
On the other hand perhaps he’d be glad to see me go. I was sure some of the Colombo monks would be pleased if I were to leave, for they thought me a strange bird.
Then too, there was the kuti. I’d returned so that it shouldn’t be neglected. But I was aware now that at least one Western monk would be glad to make use of it, ruined or not.
A pinprick of a gunshot popped the air like a balloon, then another, then silence. It came from up Matale side, where snipers fired on patrols, then ran.
The Mahathera couldn’t object to my going. Not with this war going on. But it looked to be a short war. I’d have to move fast and settle my plans before it ended if I was to make use of it. I might be the only person in the country for whom this uprising was a success.
There’d be problems in India, of course. Goals to work towards. Would I be able to find solitude? Suitable alms? That I didn’t know was a good argument for staying where I was, so to strengthen my resolve to go I conjured up an image of an India where it was easy to find appropriate places and decided that I would go to that sort of an India. An India where almsfood came without trouble, where it was possible to manage without money, where there was no heavy Buddhist tradition to weigh me down with its encumbrances, where the energy was so pure that without difficulty and at will I could attain to those meditations praised by the wise, where … With an India as promising as that why had I stayed in Ceylon for so long? I had to leave.
I went into the kuti and sat on the bed that was now installed in it. The walls met my gaze and returned it. Since I didn’t feel like meditating while being stared at I chose to read while I could. On the shelf were all my books: in India they’d be only a memory. There’d be no way to take them with me. In India I’d have to get along without them.
That, I recognized, was a strong argument for going. It was such a strong argument it made me waver in my decision to leave. Could I give up those hours of the day when I could lose myself in words about finding myself, or rather in words about giving up the search to find myself?
Before I could start cataloguing all the things that would be lost to me in India, before my resolve could waver, I gathered paper and pen and wrote a letter to the Mahathera announcing my intention to leave the country. The closest I could come, though, to asking his permission to go was: “I know, bhante, that under these circumstances you won’t object to this decision.”
Chapter Eight (cont.) (ii) Dear Crackers:
The grass was still damp from last night’s shower and the meditation room was too crowded, but the tree behind the vihara was encircled by a bench unoccupied at the moment. I sat quietly, eyes open, observing rather than concentrating, but my solitude didn’t last long. Several Westerners, having been booted from the kitchen, moved their conversation to the bench. I recognized two of them as Cisco and Ganesh. They nodded to me, and I smiled back. I considered moving to a less crowded place, but didn’t know where I might find one. There were a lot of people taking this meditation course. Perhaps I’ll learn something by listening. Ven. Ñanavira had prefaced his book, Notes on Dhamma, with a Sutta quotation about listening.
There are, monks, these two conditions for the arising of wrong view. Which are the two? Another’s utterance and improper attention. These, monks, are the two conditions for the arising of wrong view.
There are, monks, these two conditions for the arising of right view. Which are the two? Another’s utterance and proper attention. These, monks, are the two conditions for the arising of right view.
It would depend, then, not on what was said but on how I listened.
“Anyone seen the peanut man?”
“Not since breakfast time. He was here at breakfast.”
“Yeah? That means he won’t show up again ’til lunch.”
“You don’t expect him to come at your convenience, do you?”
“I wouldn’t expect anything reasonable in India.”
“Why should India be different than the rest of the world?”
“Not only that; why make such a fuss over peanuts? I wish that’s all I had to wait for.”
“By the time your money gets here it’ll seem like peanuts.”
“I still don’t know if the telegram and letter ever arrived. I must spend half my life waiting for money. Seems like that’s all I ever do.”
“And by the time you finally get it it’s already gone in paying back what you’ve borrowed while you were waiting. Yeah, I know how it is.”
“I’m gonna go poke around in the kitchen. Maybe I can get something to eat. If you see the peanut man get me a rupee’s worth, will you?”
“If you give me a rupee.”
The peanut man came to the gates of the vihara at unpredictable hours during the day. Since we weren’t to leave the grounds of the vihara for the duration of the ten-day course he did a lively business when he appeared. There were always those who, unable to meditate, sought diversions. Each time he came some of my putative fellow meditators would desert the practice to buy, shell, and eat peanuts, and to talk. Cisco was always waiting for the peanut man, just as Ganesh was always waiting for money. They showed equal lack of foresight in attending to their needs, but I refrained from pointing that out.
“That Cisco, he must have a tapeworm.”
“He says he had a shit test in Delhi.”
“Then it must be the munchies.”
“You think he’s been turning on in here?”
No dope, no sex: such were the conditions during the course, even for laypeople.
“No. He’s probably got residual munchies.”
“We’ve probably all got them.”
“Gotta watch out for them residuals. They’ll get you every time.”
This was for many of these people their first time in months — or longer — without their stimulants, and the withdrawal symptoms were interesting to observe. Most of them were facing for the first time the vertiginous prospect of life without diversions. I listened to them with a sort of clinical interest, as a patient who was already familiar with the early symptoms of withdrawal, and also with a sort of compassion for the anxiety concealed in their words. The three main topics of talk among the disenchanted were always food, health, and dope (sex seemed to run a poor fourth), and they exhausted those topics before moving on to others.
“So I go into this office,” Ganesh was saying, “and stacked against the walls, every single wall, from floor to ceiling, are these shelves crammed full with files. And on the floor are more stacks of paper, sometimes six and eight feet high, with barely room between them for three desks. And at each desk is a clerk, busy writing up more papers and adding them to the stacks. Then I go in to see the chief honcho, he’s got his own office, you know? And in there are more shelves of files and stacks of papers everywhere. There’s hardly room for this little Indian bureaucrat in his own office.”
Ganesh hunched his shoulders and shrank within himself in pantomime of the crowded bureaucrat. He was amusing.
“I ask him about all the files and folders, and he says it’s almost all old records, so old they were there before even he came to the office as a clerk forty years ago or something. And I ask him, ‘How can you ever find anything in all those stacks?’ And he says, ‘We couldn’t if we had to. But fortunately, that’s of no concern, because as long as I’ve been here we’ve never had a single call for any of these files.’”
Ganesh was good at reproducing the gestures, cadences, and dialect of Indian English. He wore pink-toned yoga pants and a pullover shirt. He seemed always well-scrubbed. He had a prominent nose and carried his pot-belly on a thin frame. His top-knot and beard enhanced his performance, and there was laughter.
“If they were no use why did he keep them?” someone asked.
“That’s what I said. ‘It’s necessary, sir, to obtain permission from the ministry in New Delhi before even one sheet of these files could be put to the torch.’”
“Did he ever apply?”
“Sure. He applied for permission to destroy all files unchanged for more than seven years. He applied five years ago, and he got his answer a few months ago.”
“That’s the normal waiting period for any communication with New Delhi, isn’t it?”
“Did he get permission?”
“He did. He said to me, ‘They could see the justice of our case. They gave permission. But unfortunately they saw fit to include the proviso that before we could destroy any file we had to make three copies of it.’”
This time I laughed too.
“Only in India.”
“It’s an incredible place.”
“It’s an appalling place.”
“It’s the spiritual center of the universe.”
“And Bodh Gaya is the spiritual center of India.”
The vihara was on the edge of the village of Bodh Gaya, close to the nearly-dry Nerañjara river.
“That’s a presumptuous claim.”
“I don’t claim it. I just accept it.”
Cisco returned empty-handed, his lips moist, a crumb in his beard. “Couldn’t get a thing,” he complained.
“Spiritual center?”
“Bellybutton of the universe.”
“Contemplating this village is like contemplating your navel.”
“Great. But where is that peanut man?”
A bell rang, summoning the bhikkhus to dana. There were eight or ten of us in a crowd of several hundred: most participants were young travelers. I was the only Western monk. The others were Burmese, Thai, and Indochinese. We bhikkhus ate before noon, of course: that was our way. Cisco would have to wait with the others until twelve or later to get more food for his belly.
In this vihara’s small danasala we sat side by side on thick paduras. No almsmen here, dayakas served us choice foods which, in silence, we ate from good china plates. I hadn’t found much use for the almsbowl in India. Tucked under each plate was an envelope, its corner discreetly protruding. Inside would be a gift of five or ten rupees, which I would accept.
“Take it,” Crackers had urged, offering me a few hundred rupees. “I’m not going to be around to cover for you any more.” He was on his way back home.
“I don’t want money.”
“It’s a good idea, this trip through India. But you’re going to have to use money or it’ll be impossible. This isn’t a barter society anymore.”
“That I couldn’t survive in India today without money is a strong argument for going to Thailand right now.”
“Then go. But if you’re going to see India don’t do it the hard way.”
“If I went to Thailand now I might never regret not seeing the four holy places when I had the chance. But then again, I might. I should see them while I can.”
“Great idea. But be practical about it.”
“Even more than the four holy places, what interest me are the places where the Buddha meditated and preached. Savatthi. Rajagaha. I’d like to see what’s left of them.”
“There were some big cities in the Magdhese Kingdom. There must still be some ruins.”
“The Buddha spent a lot of time on Vulture’s Peak. It might be a good place to meditate.”
“It was good enough for him.”
“Seeing those places might help me understand the spirit of the Suttas better.”
“It’s a good plan. But you can’t do it today without money.”
“I can’t huh?” I looked at the bills and sighed.
“When you get to Thailand you can confess, and start fresh.”
“I can, huh?” So I’d told myself, before going to Ceylon, and it had worked then.
Crackers shook his head. “Believe me. Take it. You’ll need it.”
I believed him. I took it. I needed it.
After dana we rinsed our hands and left, for the dayakas would clean up. To get to my room I had to cross the courtyard. Although I kept my eyes lowered I saw that, meditation time over, the yard was filled with traveler-folk — freaks, they called themselves these days — who sat in clusters on the lawn, under the tree, or on the steps, talking. Some were lined up for the mess-style lunch that would be served soon. I noticed Cisco near the head of the line.
Many freaks carried their own plate or bowl. Others would use the traditional banana-leaf plate. Those new to India still had the plumpness of the well-fed about them. Those who had been around for a while wore mostly Eastern clothing. There were a few topknots, and a few Westerners wore the white muslin of an upasaka and were shorn like me. The shorn women looked surprisingly unfeminine. They weren’t the reason I kept my eyes lowered. It was because of the very feminine long-haired lasses.
“How, sir, should we conduct ourselves towards women?”
“Don’t look at them, Ananda.”
“But if we do see them?”
“Don’t talk to them, Ananda.”
“But if they should speak to us?”
“Be mindful, Ananda. Be mindful.”
It wasn’t sufficient that they dress modestly, as they should. Nor was it sufficient that they act modestly as well, nor that they keep their distance, nor even that they remain entirely hidden from view. They were here, in all their myriad possibilities, and it was necessary to hold strictly in check that part of me that would yield to their tender allure, for I didn’t wish that part of me to be in control. It pouted and skulked about, seeking release, demanding attention, and sucking up energy and spirit like any addiction. This enforced closeness to such succulent female flesh was, for me, the most difficult part of the Goenka course.
I paced up and down the hallway for a bit to limber up. It was no good doing sitting meditation without sufficient warm-up. In the middle of the length of the hall there was a view of the courtyard. Each time I passed by I challenged myself to keep my eyes lowered, and steeled myself for the effort, and still sometimes I stole a glance out to the courtyard. It wasn’t just that I wanted a woman; it was that the looseness and lack of restraint shown by most of the freaks was appealing. And although I saw the danger in such ease I also saw the allure. And although I maintained restraint I was as much subject to the allures of the senses as anyone, and to the gecko-like comfort of not taking care. And I was ashamed of my susceptibilities, for I felt I’d been a meditator too long to be still having lustful thoughts. And I felt dissatisfied to be reminded, in seeing the freaks being fed mess-style, that I was treated as though I were superior to them, for it emphasized all the more so that I wasn’t.
We were together with Goenka, a meditation master who led intensive ten-day courses which were, by now, among the most popular attractions in India for freaks. Crackers and I had wondered what value such a course could have for those already experienced in meditation, like us.
“There might be good energy in a group effort.”
“There might be noise and confusion.”
“If I’d had guidance I might still be in robes.”
“But Goenka, he’s part of the guru circuit. I wonder if it’s possible nowadays for any teacher in India to not get caught up in that industry. It reminds me of the Bible Belt.”
“All I’ve heard of Goenka has been very favorable.”
“But it’s a group course. Meditation is the cultivation of solitude. I have to wonder whether putting myself in the presence of so much potential distraction would be a help.”
“I thought I’d mention it because I’ve heard that the next course is in January, and it’ll be at Bodh Gaya. You’ll be going there anyway” — it was one of the four holy places — “so I thought I’d mention it.”
“If I happen to be there in January I might see what it’s all about. But I won’t go out of my way for it.”
“I also hear the Dalai Lama will be in Bodh Gaya in January. Some sort of special ceremony for the Tibetans.”
“Before I go off to Thailand what I want most is to return to the Himalayas. I haven’t seen them in five years. I think that in some way I can’t explain they had something to do with my taking the robes.”
“I remember the Tibetan lamas and refugees. Man, they had nothing. They were absolutely condemned to lives of drudgery and hunger. But they were the first Buddhists I’d ever seen, and they were the first people I’d ever met who seemed happy.”
“The Tibetans are impressive; but I don’t think they were a factor in my coming to the robes. It was something about the Himalayas themselves. They’re so vast and open that maybe just being around them opened me up to something. I don’t know …” My voice trailed off, embarrassed at not making sense.
“When you get to Thailand you’ll let me know if conditions there are better than in Ceylon?”
I patted his shoulder bag where I kept the plane ticket. “And if there are any teachers there I’ll let you know.” I was no longer angry at Crackers for disrobing and wished him well.
“And if you take that Goenka course drop me a line. I’d be interested to hear about it.”
“If I take it I’ll let you know what it’s like.”
And we’d parted, I to take a last look at India and he to I know not where.
When I’d walked enough I went into my room and sat on the bed. I crossed my legs, closed my eyes, and turned the attention to the breathing, then remembered that for these ten days I was supposed to meditate as Goenka had instructed, not on the nose-tip but on the whole body, placing the attention successively on the parts of the body in a sweeping movement of my attention, ending at the chest. I tried it for a while, then remembered that I still had the envelope from dana tucked into my belt.
My eyes fluttered open. No, let it wait until after meditation. I closed my eyes again. But what if I forgot it afterwards? What if the money got misplaced? And my eyes tried to open again. I kept them closed, telling myself that I wouldn’t forget it; I wouldn’t misplace it. But how much was there? Should I look, and settle the question? Or leave it where it was and not give in to the urge?
So I debated with myself until finally I opened the envelope and found five rupees. Then I had to put it away lest it be lost, or lest I fret over the possibility. Like any habit, it had to be supported and cared for. And then I thought about how much money I had, and calculated how much I could spend per day until I boarded a plane for Thailand. I wanted to stay long enough to return to the Himalayas. In January, though, it was still too cold in Nepal for the clothing I had, even with the angsa, so I stayed in the Northern plains until the weather turned. The Goenka course was helping me get through winter.
The flight would leave from Calcutta. That meant I would be seeing Ven. Dharmapal again. I’d already been there once, after the long train ride up from Madras. The most attractive features of Calcutta were still its poverty and ugliness, both of which (it hardly seemed possible) were more striking than when I’d first been there. And there were still the beggars, more desperate than ever. Paise, sahib; paise, sahib. I’d walked into the vihara unannounced to find Ven. Dharmapal in his quarters.
“Ñanasuci. So you’ve come back, eh?”
He hadn’t seemed surprised, nor noticeably different than he had five years ago.
“Now you’re not Vinayadhara any longer, are you? Now you’re Ñanasuci. Or are you something else now, eh? So you’re still liking this life? It’s still good?”
He smiled pleasantly as I bowed. He made an indeterminate throaty sound. My robe, worn properly, didn’t come undone and fall to the floor.
“It’s good, bhante.”
The bell rang for the afternoon group meditation, but I stayed where I was. The course had a rigorous daily schedule which we were expected to follow (although, as Goenka had explained, the only penalty we would incur from failure to keep to it was to benefit less from the course). But I’d tried the meditation hall, and preferred to be alone in my room.
All the distractions! The noise! The slightest rustling of clothing had reminded me, before I stopped attending the sessions, how awareness of others infected all attempts at group mindfulness. The muffled cough, the footstep on the stairs, snapped at my attention like a rat-trap. And even when the others made no noise at all, awareness of them touched ever so lightly on my consciousness, spring-taut.
The freaks didn’t have private rooms to which they could retire. They slept dormitory-style in the vihara’s attic and in some large tents, segregated by sex. The only ones with rooms were the monks and the few Indian gentlemen who took the course. The Indians were all elderly, wore only white, and would have no truck with the multi-colored freaks who dominated the course. The freaks slept on the floor, protected from the wintry nights by whatever bedding they had with them, usually sleeping bags. When it rained they got wet.
I turned my attention to the meditation Goenka taught. It was one of those taught by the Buddha, and had its own pleasures and pitfalls, but I was comfortable with the breathing meditation, as with an old robe, and preferred it. After a while my knees began to ache and I wanted to stretch them. With a resolve I turned attention back to bodily feelings. But as the aching knees asserted themselves more stridently attention became more difficult to maintain.
Another five minutes, I told myself. I can manage another five minutes. And when I guessed the time to be over I pressed myself to stay for yet another five minutes, to prove I was trying. Finally I could sit no longer. Anticipation of activity smothered watchfulness of bodily feelings. I uncrossed my legs and, when they stopped tingling, left the room.
I walked to the flower beds and circled them for a while. Calmed and relaxed, I walked slowly. It was time for group meditation, but some freaks were sitting outside, singly and in groups: a winter sun was out. They were only part of the landscape, like the flowers and trees, to me. Then I saw Cisco and Ganesh talking to some other freaks. They nodded at me and patted the ground in invitation to sit.
“Have some peanuts,” Cisco offered.
I declined.
“What amazes me,” Ganesh was saying, “is how serious the Buddhists are. At the ashram we were always dancing and playing music and smoking dope and carrying on. We did freaky things just to do them. You don’t find that around here. Is this the way it is in other viharas?” he asked me.
“This is wild compared to some places I’ve lived.”
“It seems like a great discipline, then. But I can’t help feeling that it’s also a very narrow discipline. There doesn’t seem to be any expression of human emotions, it’s intellectually didactic, and artistically impoverished.”
“Hmm.”
“I mean, meditation is one way of learning the truth about ourselves, but what about other ways. What about, say, the intricacy of Tibetan painting, or the simplicity of Zen poetry, or the purity of Balinese dance? Why doesn’t Theravada Buddhism make use of those techniques?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know about any of that stuff.”
“What does the Buddha say about artistic expression?”
I scratched my head. I’d need another shave soon. “I don’t know. I can’t recall anything about use of art in the Suttas, except the little poems monks sometimes made up, like you find in the Dhammapada.”
“Nothing like an Aesthetics?”
I shook my head doubtfully. “Not that I’ve run across. The only relevant quote I can recall is, ‘Two things only do I teach: suffering and the path leading to the ceasing of suffering.’”
“What about the Tarot, then? What about astrology?”
“I don’t know anything about them.”
“How come Hindus accept other teachings as equally valid and Buddhists don’t? Theravadins don’t even accept Mahayana as valid, do they?”
“The person’s more important than the system he’s shackled to. As soon as you get involved in a system you’re distorting reality.”
“Systems are only devices.”
“Systems are attempts at a complete view, and a complete view is an impossibility for an existing human being. There’s no way you can get an ‘outside’ view of your own experience because the view is part of the experience.”
“How about a system with an ‘inside’ view?”
“The Suttas don’t reject this system or that system. They reject the need to systematize. Suffering doesn’t need to be categorized. It needs to be given up.”
“But there are lots of Theravadins who treat the Dhamma as if it were a system.”
I didn’t dispute him.
“Man is a builder,” someone said. “If the Buddha doesn’t deal with systems he doesn’t deal with man.”
“The Buddha’s Teaching is a collection of advice on the nature of systems, and the path leading to the ceasing of system-building.”
“What do you mean, system-building? The universe is already there: we don’t build it.”
“Aha — a Realist. But the world doesn’t simply present itself to me uniformly. Or, rather, I don’t perceive the world as a uniform whole. It’s warped, so to speak, by the choices I make, so that some parts become more prominent and others fade out of awareness. And parts of this warped structure are colored by emotions like dye-marked specimens. All of that is involved in the perception of the world ‘out there.’”
“Aha — an Idealist. You’re saying that the world only exists as you perceive it. That it wouldn’t exist if you didn’t somehow participate in its being.”
“That’s not my point. That’s no less a frame of reference than your Realist position, that the world out there is what there is and we’d better learn to see it that way.”
“Then?”
“I’m not talking about the world. I’m talking about how I perceive the world. If I perceive it with ideas of ‘me’ and ‘mine,’ then I perceive it with desire, or greed, or hatred, or delusion. The important question isn’t whether the world is real, in any way or any degree, but how we’re going to relate to that world, no matter whether we call it real or imaginary.”
One of the freaks got up. “It’s too much for me,” he said. “I can’t understand it.” And he walked off.
“The only thing we can do is make it as good a world as we can,” another freak remarked.
“Before that we have to find out what ‘good’ means.”
“It means what benefits the most people, what makes the greatest number happy, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?”
“It means doing your duty,” another said.
“It means how you feel. If you’re happy, then it’s good.”
“It means to do away with suffering.”
“As long as there is birth, decay, and death there’s suffering,” I remarked.
“Then you won’t be happy until everyone’s done away with suffering?”
“I hope I don’t have to wait that long.”
“Can you be happy when other people are suffering?”
“I hope so.”
“Isn’t that selfish?”
“Would the world be better if I suffered too?”
“But should you run away from the suffering of the world?”
“Should I run from facing my own suffering by losing myself in the suffering of others?”
“Isn’t that just running from the real world, and its responsibilities?”
“It’s easier to live concerned with other people’s suffering than your own.”
“That’s escapism. Aren’t you refusing to face reality?”
“Yes.”
I’d been asked such questions before and had learned by now the futility of trying to explain a way of life to those who had all their lives immersed themselves in stimulants, irritants, and distractions and concerned themselves with others to avoid themselves. Such folk would ask me — or tell me — about karma, about rebirth, about heavens and hells, meditation, levitation, the eternal, the temporal, the finite and the infinite, the good, the bad, the high, the low, and a thousand other speculations, imaginations, and fancies. And when I answered them with words about greed, hatred, and delusion, or with words about birth, decay, and death, or with words about impermanence, suffering, and not-self, they would turn away dissatisfied and seek elsewhere for answers to their cosmic questions.
In a while my companions left and wandered off to other parts of the vihara, leaving me to sit on the grass alone. I closed my eyes and observed, from within, the ongoing experience. It consisted of matter, feelings, perceptions, conditions, and consciousness. What was there to escape from, or to?
I didn’t know whether Bodh Gaya was the spiritual center of the universe, but it seemed to be the center of concern for spiritual things. Within the guru circuit that concern was a blatant hindrance to the practice, which involved neither doctrine nor system, but simply sitting down and doing it.
With best wishes,
V
Chapter Eight (cont.) (iii) It was probably the world’s biggest prayer wheel and, like modern plumbing, it was indoors. The Tibetans seemed impressed by both facts. The walls of the octagonal structure containing it portrayed religious figures and deities, some of whom had many arms. One had numerous heads, each piled atop another: Avalokitesvara, the deity of compassion. There was a rigid formalism in the postures and backgrounds, as if each portrait revealed in itself an entire life.
I followed the line of devotees as we circled the prayer wheel, always keeping our right sides towards it. It occupied nearly the entire room. The devotees kept the wheel spinning — each turn a completed prayer — and I gave the handle a pull as it lumbered past, just to keep my hand in.
“Aren’t you going to see the Dalai Lama?” Ganesh had asked before the course had ended. The Dalai Lama (and hundreds of his Tibetan followers) had gathered here to perform a ceremony honoring the place where the Buddha had sat when he’d woken from the sleep of ignorance and craving. That place was shaded by a venerable Bo-tree, an offshoot of the original.
I hadn’t expressed enthusiasm. “I don’t know. He’s not going to come to me, that’s for sure.” But I doubted that I would go to him either.
“I’m glad I went. I’ll probably never have the chance again, and he’s the spiritual leader of millions of people. And he’s a far-out dude.”
“Maybe I will go, after all.” But I had nothing to say to him and doubted, too, that he had anything to say to me.
Tibetan Buddhism was very big among freaks, and many had passed in front of the Dalai Lama. A few had obtained short audiences. No doubt my robes would have entitled me to one also. But none of the reported conversations interested me. The Dalai Lama seemed to be heavily involved in the politics of exile. What he had to say about Dhamma seemed a repetition of traditional Tibetan dogmas. I expected more from a spiritual guide. I’d conversed with Goenka-ji: he was as impressive as any teacher I’d met, yet I found no interest in remaining by his side either.
“Even if you don’t talk with him, just seeing him is worth it.”
“Maybe I will go.” But privately I summed up my attitude more definitively: you seen one guru, you seen ’em all. I remembered some advice I’d been given long ago, when I’d asked about teachers: Let the practice be your teacher.
But if I didn’t care to see the Dalai Lama why had I bothered to join the line outside the Tibetan Temple to circle the prayer wheel? And why did I go around twice? I felt a bit foolish doing it: it was so contrary to what I thought really concerned me. But it brought back memories of Nepal, of the Monkey Temple atop Swayambu, of many magical times in the Himalayas. Perhaps I was doing it for old-times’ sake.
It was something to do. Now that the course was over the freaks had left, for the most part. Now that the Dalai Lama’s ceremony was over the Tibetans, too, had left, for the most part. But going around twice was exercise enough for me; I left the Tibetan Temple and walked along the road.
The little village had reverted to a more familiar somnolence. Dogs ranged among the chi stands, sniffing out crumbs. I stopped at a stand that seemed less bedraggled than the others.
“Ek chi dudh.” One milk tea.
I sat on a rude bench and sipped the overly-sweet milk tea. The chi-wallah had a screened case, but it contained no gulab jamuns, only stale rolls, and I contented myself with tea.
Pigs rooted among the litter-piles. Buffalo were herded along the road. The village beggar remained, forlorn at the prospect of harder times to come. Paise, sahib. The mud huts of the village encroached nearly to the doorsteps of the pilgrimage sites and ancient ruins, but the imposing pyramidal Maha Bodhi Temple dominated everything: the Temple of the Great Awakening.
The Buddha had had milk-rice, not milk tea. Seeking enlightenment, he’d practiced the strictest asceticisms possible, until he was so thin and weak he was at the point of death. Then he concluded that if there were an escape from suffering it couldn’t be through such deprivations, for he’d followed that path as far as it would go. To regain the strength he’d lost he accepted milk-rice from a village girl.
“That milk-rice must’ve given him a charge,” Ganesh had remarked when I’d told him the story of the Great Awakening.
After eating, he’d gone to the banks of the river, the Nerañjara, sat beneath a bo-tree, and resolved: Let skin, sinew, and bones waste away; let flesh and blood dry up; I will not move from this seat until I have attained perfect wisdom.
In those days the village had been known as Uruvela, and only later came to be known as Bodh Gaya. The river must have shifted course in the intervening centuries: it now passedagood half-mile from the revered site of that Awakening before turning aside and flowing towards the Ganges.
The tea had come in a throwaway clay cup, the Indian version of the Dixie cup. Intended for a single use, they were poorly fired. Minute bits of clay added a richness of flavor and texture to the tea. When I finished I tossed the cup onto the litter-pile. It broke into a dozen pieces, and I walked on.
Since the Goenka course had ended I’d moved to the Thai Temple down the road. I wanted to stay in Bodh Gaya a while longer before continuing on my pilgrimage. If the temples in Thailand were anything like this one they’d be fine places to live. Ganesh had spent a month in Thailand waiting for money and knew about their temples.
“Wait’ll you see the temples in Bangkok,” he’d said. “Now, those are beautiful. Compared to them, this one’s a dump.”
The dump had a magnificent lawn leading to a large preaching hall, tile-roofed in the bangled ski-jump curves of Thai architecture, with an oiled teak floor and one elegant Buddha-rupa. Another stretch of lawn separated this hall from the living quarters. Rooms opened onto a verandah circling a leaf-strewn central courtyard. One of the rooms here had been allotted to me while I stayed at the temple.
There was no sign of any of the Thai monks. I didn’t usually see them about except for dana and evening pirith. The weather was bland for January, but I went to my room anyway. After making myself comfortable I sat down on the four-poster bed and closed my eyes to meditate.
I turned my mind towards the present. Bodily feeling: that was present. The toes: there was feeling; the feet, ankles, calves, knees … I scanned the body observing what was felt. From the toes up, from the scalp down, from the fingers in, and finally attention rested on the chest, seeking feeling. There was something there, a tight little spot of feeling that caught me unawares. It was unfamiliar, different from all other bodily feelings, and for a moment I felt threatened by it. The words “chest pain” and the implications of the words came to mind, and with the thought the feeling vanished. Then I realized: that spot of feeling was the nimitta that was associated with this meditation. Just as mindfulness of breathing had its nimitta (that cool little spot at the tip of the nose), so too there was a sign associated with this meditation. In the moment of non-recognition it had frightened me. In the moment of recognition I’d frightened it. Now I wanted it back. I turned my attention to the chest area again and probed for it, but it wasn’t there. Too bad. It was so calm, so peaceful. It was a little space of non-desire, and I wanted it.
It was with dismay that I again recognized the contradiction. I’d played with it ever since I’d thought of it, even before ordination: How, I’d asked, could it be meaningful to want to give up desire? For as long as the desire to give up was there there was still desire. And didn’t that make renunciation an impossibility? But this time, more than ever, the contradiction stood out sharply, for it was involved with the nimitta, and I was dismayed.
And not only had I desired it, but I’d also been frightened by it, until I’d given it a name and thus mastered it. But named or not, the nimitta, if it was anything, was a sign of calmness, not of wanting. Was I afraid, then, of desirelessness?
Apparently so, for the thought that had immediately followed the perception was: If I don’t want anything what will I do with myself? How will I fill my days?
First I’d been told to give up material things. That had been relatively easy, for there were enough modes of action with which to occupy myself. Then I’d learned about restraint of the faculties. That, too, I’d managed: sila was the directing of modes of conduct, not the total giving up of activity. Whatever failures I’d met in fulfilling the Vinaya, I’d still managed to fill my day. Then had come the mental disciplines: turning the mind away from thoughts of reputation, of anger, of sensuality … Each step on the path of renunciation had left me with the question: Now what can I do to fill my hours? And, each time, the prospect of giving up another form of time-structuring had left me with a feeling of bleakness, of emptiness; and each renunciation had been followed by a search for some alternative form of activity. From sensuality to study, from study to meditation, from meditation to joy, from joy to frustration, from frustration to intellectualization, from intellectualization to talk, from talk to writing …
A door closed sharply and, unexpected, startled me. The sound echoed in my head as the mind gobbled after it. Whatever was happening the mind either shrank from or jumped at, whether it was the feathery nothingness of the nimitta or the sound of one door closing. It was all the same: contact-food for an ever-ravenous mind. Add that to the list of endless tasks I still managed to find for myself in spite of all the renouncing I’d busied myself with these past years. There were still passion, hatred, and delusion, and I still relied on stimulants, irritants, and distractions to assuage that unholy trinity and get me to the next moment. It was discontent (and all that went with it) and not content that was the driving force of all this movement, including the movement towards renunciation. It was that discontent that I wore with pride.
But now I saw — against my will, it seemed — still another step to be taken, one more frightening than any of the others: to give up that discontent. If I gave up that what was left? How could Ioccupy myself? What could I do?
I watched myself uncross my legs and stand, then arrange my robes and go outside to the verandah. A clothesline ran the length of the ambulatory. Several robes hung from it. There was no place to walk. With great deliberateness I watched myself sit down on the edge of the verandah and look at the bushes that crowded together in the center of the courtyard.
I perceived a life-long pattern. In the most overwhelming and in the least of feelings there were anxiety and dissolution. There was a shrinking from and a seeking after. There was a need to touch and a fear to touch, for where I couldn’t touch, there I couldn’t find myself. The world and I were bound together and held apart in a state of perpetual tension by desire and dissatisfaction.
As if by request an itch appeared, and I almost scratched it before I realized what I was doing. Then I let it alone and felt it drop away from me. Without the itch what was the scratch? Without the scratch where was the itch? The questions echoed unanswered within an empty space in my head, then dropped away, leaving behind peace.
The peace was shocking. I was shocked, appalled, to perceive that all my life had been involved in seeking substance from the world, in being a beggar. I looked at the bushes again, as if for the first time. There was a crystalline sharpness to them, a preternatural clarity. Was it the light? Or was it that, not wanting anything of them, I was able to see them, and not fogs of fancies, mind-fodder? Or perhaps it was some quality of the clay cup from which I’d drunk that over-sweetened tea.
The Buddha had likely had a clay almsbowl in which to accept that milk-rice. Perhaps there was some energizing force in the soil itself that accounted for this energy I felt. It would be a good joke on me if it turned out that in the earthiest of senses Bodh Gaya actually was the spiritual center of the universe.
There was a seeing. I didn’t question what sort of seeing. There was: a field of vision, colored shapes occupying that field, an awareness of the field, the vision. There was no ground from which the field of vision was observed. The field of vision was the observing. And, curiously, there was nothing else whatsoever.
I felt neither cold nor warmth, I felt neither anger nor gladness. I could reach for any percept I chose, and perhaps touch it, but I didn’t. I accepted the experience as I saw it.
It was unexpected. This sort of perception, the seeing of the world without preference, ought to be a bright and golden moment. I’d always assumed there would be a relief, the lifting of a burden, revealing a new world extending boundlessly into the future with Golden Times. Now I saw otherwise: without the glittery illusions of desire the world was neutral, uncaring, indifferent, and non-indicative. The absence of want was an emptiness without hope, something that wouldn’t be worth bothering with if it weren’t the only alternative to the misery of want. I sighed deeply, for I felt cut loose from my foundations.
A door shut softly behind me, but I heard sound, not noise. The sound was external and didn’t affect the quietness I felt within me.
“Ñanasuci. You are sitting watching the leaves fall, eh?” It was one of the Thai monks. “Perhaps, then, you won’t mind helping me sweep them up?”
“I’ll be glad to.” We took brooms to the courtyard and began sweeping. He smiled at the way I held the broom.
“Ñanasuci. You should put your right hand on top. Like this. Eh?” He demonstrated.
“Of course. How stupid of me. I keep forgetting such simple things.”
I swept, a bit awkwardly, with my right hand on top. Involved completely in the activity, I swept attentively and methodically towards the young leafy tree. Empty of past and future, I felt lightened. Lightened, the ground seemed not distant, but remote, and I felt as if I were nearly floating.
The leaves, I saw, were the serrate-edged leaves of a bo-tree, probably an offspring of the one the Buddha had sat beneath the night of the Great Awakening. Having resolved not to rise unenlightened, he had turned his attention upon his own experience and come at last to understand what had not been understood before: Whatever is of a nature to arise, all that is of a nature to cease. To form attachment to the impermanent would lead only to suffering. Attachment was to be given up. And there was a way leading to the ceasing of attachment.
There it was again: the old contradiction. How can one give up the wish to give up? Now, though, I had a perception, one which I couldn’t yet formulate but which I saw to be so, and it was this: It is not the things of the world that are to be given up, for the things of the world simply are. It is desire for the world that is to be given up. But desire for is not possession of. What is truly possessed is not involved with desire. Desire is a movement. Possession is a state. The world does not remain still for me to possess it. And the movement of the world is tied to desire as well, for time is that dimension in which we wish and will. In a temporal world possession is impossible. Therefore renunciation too is impossible, not because the world cannot be renounced but because, nothing possessed, there is nothing to be given up.
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